Infaustus
by teacupdrop
Summary: A veteran. A loner. Both have their own demons to conquer, and they find it in themselves to fight them together. But love comes at a price, and the price for these two is to suffer death nearly everyday, sometimes from each other's hands. How can such an unfortunate pair fight against fate? Perhaps there is a way... (Flaky/Flippy)
1. Primus

**(A/N: Hey, this is Tea! This is my first HTF fanfic, but I've been thinking about writing this for years now. It'll be mainly about Flaky and Flippy so if you came here for other characters, you might be disappointed. This is set in a human universe of HTF. Things might get gory and smutty, so hence the M rating. Please enjoy!)**

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><p>Before I begin this tale of misery and woe, I should introduce myself. It's only fair you know exactly who's telling this story. Then maybe, you could have it in your heart to forgive me.<p>

I'm Flaky. I don't know how old I am, and I doubt anyone here knows how old they are. I have red eyes, but don't be fooled. I'm not anywhere near scary; I'm the most scared person in any given room. My hair is also red and untameable, with dandruff everywhere. Psoriasis is annoying, but I can't really care for it when literally everything is out to kill you every day. And I've died, in more ways than I can remember.

Happy Tree may just be the best contender for the most misleading town name ever. It's cursed, or maybe it's hell. I don't know. But I do know that Happy Tree is a timeless place that resets every midnight. This might sound nice and convenient but it's not like a "hard" reset. Oh no, you keep your memories, all your feelings, intact. It's just that Happy Tree refuses to be destroyed. You could burn the entire town down and the next morning, it's as good as new. All the charred corpses are back to living status quo, making breakfast and getting ready to start the new horrible, terrible day.

You might think it might not be all bad. After all, shouldn't I be used to it? If everything's going to reset anyway, I shouldn't worry so much and just let myself enjoy each day.

No. You wouldn't say that if you were regularly scalped, burned, diced, maimed, and killed in such creative ways I wonder if my life was meant to be a comedy.

That's what Happy Tree is like to outsiders. A joke. A neverending cycle of bloody hilarity.

I take it back. Comedies are supposed to have happy endings. And sorry to say, but this won't have a happy ending.

I wish I could properly start my story, give an exact date and all. But like I said, Happy Tree is timeless. Nobody can remember how or when they came here. We all certainly remember when "new" neighbors moved in though, like how we remember Flippy coming into town, but we can't remember exactly when. Maybe it was six months ago or a century ago. It doesn't matter.

... That's probably the best place to start this. When Flippy moved in or, I should say, came back. I was attending what you could call high school then. Cuddles, Giggles, and other Friends (that's what we call the residents of Happy Tree) attended high school with me as well. There was a lot of buzz; very few people moved in Happy Tree. Usually they just appeared one day because all Friends knew each other even vaguely. Flippy was an unusual case; he lived in Happy Tree before becoming a soldier and we knew his name in passing. Now that he was back, this was a case where we knew a Friend's name but we really didn't actually know who they were.

There were a few concerns. There were rumors that he didn't come back right, that he brought pieces of the war with him. Everyone knew soldiers always came back with a chip off their shoulder, but this was Happy Tree. There's never an "usual" case with anything. People were concerned that he might not adjust well into civilian life.

Just the thought of the situation made me nauseous and nervous. An unstable veteran was the last thing we needed. Friends were getting their faces ripped off and fingers crushed left-and-right, and now we had a possible psycho reentering the community.

Yet... In that saccharine, naive, Happy Tree way, I was worried too. Although I was always the most paranoid and skeptical of the Friends, I still cared deeply for everyone. You might think that a daily reset would make us unfazed and jaded but actually, the torment brought us together even closer. We all looked out for each other. And when I was younger, I especially ignored my frequent fits of fear for the sake of trying to be nice.

Still, none of that community feel-good sentiment could have prepared me for my chance meeting with Sgt. Flippy.

I was walking back home after school (I didn't take the bus because last time, I ended up decapitated) when I saw the conspicuous green camouflage-print uniform. The mere sight of him gave me such a fit of anxiety that I started shivering, flakes scattering everywhere, even when the weather was perfectly normal. The man himself was quite tall, with a rather muscular figure. He certainly _looked_ like a soldier. That just intimidated me even more. I was about to quickly walk past him before he could notice me, but he already spotted me a block away. The moment I came to into earshot he waved cheerfully at me. I froze and gave a swipe of my stiff palm to acknowledge him.

"Hello! Are you a student from the local high school?"

Oh no. I was _not_ going to talk to him. "Y-yes... E-Excuse m-"

Before I could get away, he swiftly continued as if he'd been waiting all along. His green-hazel eyes shone as he spoke.

"Great! I was just wondering if you knew where the book store is? I'm awfully lost; so many things have changed since I was last here." He laughed lightly, and that's when I saw his dimples. That's when I realized he was actually quite old, or maybe just aged from battle. I never really noticed age in Happy Tree.

But his comment rubbed me off the wrong way, and I really didn't want to spend another second with this man. His broad silhouette made me tremble under his shadow. "I-It's right next to the market... N-Now if you'll e-excuse me..." I nearly ran away, but I tried hiding it by walking fast with wide steps. But the sergeant chased after me. Cold sweat started beading my face.

"Wait!" He called out. "I actually don't know where the market is either. Could you point it out for me?"

_Just get a map, and get away from me! _I wanted to shout, but my throat was tight and my mouth dry. Knowing that if I just kept walking he'd tail me endlessly, I abruptly stopped and looked back to face him, a cloud of dandruff falling as my hair whipped back. I gathered up my the small amount of courage in my shrinking gut before I squeaked, "I-If you don't know, I c-could just… lead you there... F-follow me..." Scarcely before I finished speaking, I scurried away to keep my distance between me and the potential psycho.

Flippy's eyes widened to the point the brim of his beret rose slightly. "Really, you'd do that for me? Thank you!" He called back behind me as he followed. His military boots gave his steps a heaviness that made me shudder. The thought of those grave footsteps following behind me on a dark night... His dog tags too, gave a chilling metallic _chk! chk!_ each step he took.

The noises nearly broke my facade of a kindly neighborhood helper. I anxiously sprinted to the market, but each step I took it seemed like the soldier took three. He easily closed the space I made earlier. Soon enough, I could almost feel his breath behind my neck! By then, I was moving with such haste I probably made a trail of flakes across the block.

He looked normal, but he certainly didn't look like anyone else in Happy Tree. In a way, he reminded me of a bear. In cartoons, bears were always soft and cuddly; they were the ones who helped their friends with their quiet strength. In real life though, bears could maul and ravage a person into red ribbons. I imagined his large, hardened hand around my neck, his nails tearing into my skin, choking me and making me struggle for breath. In his other hand was a combat knife, hovering threateningly as his smiling face reflected off the blade. He stabbed me several times in the stomach, my screams inaudible for they never escaped my mouth.

"Are you okay…? You look pale."

I snapped out of it, noticing that my sweater was damp from my cold sweat. My face was indeed as pale as a sheet, but the sheet was quickly filled with bright red, my shame impossible to hide. I frantically waved my hand, my feet fumbling. "O-Oh, it's nothing, I just forgot we were supposed to take a turn a block ago…!" With a nervous laugh, I looked down on the ground, trying to hide my face in my long hair. I didn't dare look back at him.

Finally, after what seemed like hours when it was more like 5 minutes, we were there. The book store was mostly empty, with just a few quiet readers inside. I only noticed then that the sun was steadily setting.

I pointed to the entrance, although my baggy sweater sleeves hid most of my hand."H-Here it is… Um… I should go…!"

Again he stopped me, this time by placing a hand on my shoulder. The touch of his cold leather glove sent a chill down my spine, and I swear my face turned green. _He's going to choke me!_ the inner me screamed. Maybe he didn't notice or just didn't care, but he continued to cheerfully speak to me. "Could I at least get your name? I want to return the favor and properly thank you. I'm Flippy." He offered me his hand.

My face was stone but I mustered enough nerve to shake his hand, my eyes lingering on his glove for too long. "I-I'm Flaky…"

He shook firmly, too firmly. "Nice to meet you! Sorry if I bothered you, not a lot of people want to help out the new guy in town. Not like I blame them."

As he let go of my hand, I felt a tinge of guilt in my heart. How could I have judged him so harshly? I wasn't a popular person myself, and I could understand what it was like to receive little help from so-called Friends. "Oh, no, it wasn't… You weren't a bother, haha…" I gave him a halfhearted joking salute as if to dismiss him. Just at that moment, his eyes flashed at me like a wild animal's, the green of his eyes turning almost bright yellow. I flinched, taking a step back. He quickly regained his smile, but I noticed his lips were slightly crooked.

"Please don't do that... I'm not on active duty anymore. I'm just another Friend now." He laughed lowly, taking off his beret and rustling his hair. I responded in turn with a sorry, nervous laugh, but I knew that he was serious.

I looked down, not wanting to look at him face-to-face. Muttering a bye under my breath, I ran off like I wanted to since the beginning. I wished I would never have to speak to him again. I wished I would never have to see those eyes again.

But my wishes were not to come true.


	2. Secundus

**(A/N: You wouldn't believe the amount of suffering I went through to salvage enough of my outline and motivation to rewrite chapter 2. :( The hard drive I had all of my writing in just up and died one day, and let me tell you, that was one helluva blow. I'm not giving up on this story just yet though! Many apologies if it seems rushed, I wanted to get it over with to work on chapter 3 ASAP.)**

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><p>The next time I saw him, it was when I was a completely broken down. A lot of people toss around the words "anxiety" and "paranoia" without ever really understanding what they mean. As for me, they were all too real. Like demons, they followed me every step, watching for when I stumbled so they could drag me down to the hell of not being able to function like sane people. That's exactly what happened to me the afternoon of my second meeting with the ex-soldier.<p>

I was grocery shopping. My list was usually very short since I preferred to grab as few things as possible and make a dash back home before anything bad happened. Taking your time doing things in Happy Tree was a liability I couldn't afford. Too many... incidents could happen.

Plastic basket in hand, I went to the back of the market, my red sneaker shoe laces dragging along on the shiny yellow linoleum. I didn't even look around the aisles; I needed to get a few eggs, and I knew exactly where to get them. No need to waste time.

Suddenly, Giggles popped out of nowhere, waving her hand, her cutesy heart bead bracelet rattling as she did so. She chirped, in her sing-songy voice, "Hey Flaky! How are you?" Crap. Small talk. I instinctively shrunk, looking all around me to check for any conceivable way I could meet a deadly end within the span of a short conversation. Giggles awkwardly scratched her little pink head, slightly shifting the red ribbon clipped to hair. "Um, am I bothering you? It's just that it's been so long!"

It was true we had last met on graduation day: the day Cuddles gave himself a paper cut with his diploma on a major artery, the day Sniffles accidentally hanged himself with the celebratory balloons, and the day everyone else melted their insides out with the spiked punch. All in all, a slight discomfort.

"No, you're not bothering me... R-Really... It's nice to see you..." I meekly replied. I wasn't really sure what to say to her, but it didn't matter because she brightened up immediately.

"Me too! Hey, wasn't it hot yesterday? I heard it was a record breaking 87! Hyoo, I can't wait until fall... Anyway, I just thought of you because I remembered in PE you sometimes fainted when it got too hot! I hope you're okay now!"

Although I was touched, it was slightly surreal how she was worried about me because of the hot weather and not because of the fact the last time we saw each other we were literally hurling our melting stomachs out into the football field. "O-Oh, I'm doing good now. It was because of my thick hair; it traps more than just dandruff, I can tell you..."

Giggles started giggling uncontrollably as if I'd just told her a great joke. "You're so funny Flaky!" Suddenly, as if she just realized something, she flinched and looked at her watch. "Oh no, I'm late for my hair appointment with Petunia! I gotta go! Keep in touch, okay? Bye!" She ran off, finally leaving me at peace.

I walked quickly to the refrigerated section in the back, making sure to avoid any more social interactions. In the distant corner Handy was tinkering with something, the Mole was feeling each jar of jam in one aisle, and Russell was rustling a box of Cap'n Crunch. Avoid, avoid, avoid. I was so careful, so sure, that I'd get my eggs without a hitch until my demons finally caught up to me.

It would have been impossible to tell what would happen next, but I still should have seen it coming, expect the unexpected and all.

Lumpy was mopping the floors next to the fridges but not too well. It was a soapy watery mess, and I saw the ceiling lights reflected on the puddles. But I didn't see them until it was too late, and my loosely tied sneakers didn't help me either.

I tripped. Spectacularly. Straight into the neatly aligned egg cartons. I crashed headfirst into them, crushing dozens of eggs, a disgusting wet squish accompanying the desecration of the delicate white eggshells.

I had yolk all over me, staining my red sweater and giving my face a protein mask. My face was red from the impact and shock. A bit of embarrassment was also mixed in, probably. It's just that my scarlet face didn't last long. I paled because among the broken eggs on the fridge shelves, for whatever cosmically humorous and cruel reason, was a half-formed chick.

It was just one. And maybe I should've known something like this would have happened when shopping in an organic market. The thing wasn't even alive anyway.

But with its mangled spots of tuft and bulging eyes, all wrapped up in egg fluid, it seemed to stare straight into my soul.

I screamed.

I hated chicks. I had no problem with grown chickens or even other birds but chicks made me sick.

I still remember it clearly, even when it happened ages ago. It was in kindergarten when, for some reason, we had a field trip to a chicken nugget factory. It was to understand the workings of industrial factories behind our lives, or something like that. They showed us the entire process; the chickens were gathered up, their heads chopped off to give them a clean death, and then they were mechanically plucked and ground up to create a variety of shapes like dinosaurs and cavemen. It was grisly, but I could stomach at least that much.

The second part of the tour, though, was the kicker. Sometimes, there were too many male chicks from the company owned incubated eggs. Female chickens were desired for their fatty breasts and egg laying, but cocks were mostly useless. So what the company did was round up all the male chicks and grind them up.

It was no mercy kill. It was just a small metal box with an edged fan for a floor which, when turned on, would instantly shred the chicks into meaty paste.

They didn't mean to demonstrate that to the children. I was wandering around looking for a bathroom when I stepped into the wrong room and saw dozens of fuzzy and adorable baby birds ground into bloody red goop, their yellow down turned inside out and mixed into their own blood.

Long story short, I pissed myself and shrieked, the teacher quickly found me and the company apologized, and I had therapy for weeks.

Not like it helped. I was still terrified of chicks since I just knew a small misstep or mishandling would cut their lives short and end their miserable existence. And in the middle of the market was a half-formed chick that reminded me of those bloated animal corpses suspended in jars of formaldehyde

I didn't know when I collapsed but I found myself on the floor, a basket full of my groceries tipped over, its contents scattered all over the floor. Tears flowed freely from my red eyes, and I failed to stifle my heaving sobs.

Behind me were the sounds of frantic footsteps, and suddenly I felt leather-gloved hands wrap around my shoulders.

"Are you okay?!" It was Flippy. I knew from the voice at least, because I was frozen and unable to turn my head, my eyes fixed on the dead chick.

The hands went away, and he stood up, shouting, "You! Help me clean this up!"

The sounds of boxes toppling and a mop squishing around accompanied a high-pitched squeal and the sound of a deep throaty exhalation. It was a distressed Lumpy desperately trying to clean up the new mess, ignoring me entirely. "Another mess! Another mess! What to do, what to do!" Thrashing about with his wet mop, he launched the dead half-formed chick half across the room.

At that moment, all I wanted to do was curl up and die, or at least disappear to a place where chicks didn't exist and nothing had to die inside a box full of razors. To my luck, I did exactly that. Curl up and die.

Lumpy took another step, right into the very puddle I slipped in, and very gracefully, he twisted and twirled like a clownish ballerino, and slammed into a shelf nearby. The shelf wobbled and then finally fell over; like dominoes, the rest of the shelves followed the leader with sick metallic crunches.

I was right in their path. Closing my eyes, I waited for the worst to come. After so many deaths, you learn to accept the inevitable, and that's what I did. The deafening sound of boxes, cans, rolls, and other paraphernalia crashing and dropping onto the ground drowned out all of my senses. Instead of my bones crushing and my blood rushing out, an arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me out so suddenly that I fell over sprawled, atop a mass. The sounds stopped, the dust settled, and the beat of my heart replaced the silence that followed the cacophony. When my eyes opened, I was greeted by a certain soldier's face. I was on top of him.

Although it was now dark, I dared to look up to see that a shelf was barely a few inches above me, its only support another fell shelf. My eyes then lowered to meet the hazel eyes of my apparent savior. For a moment, I thought a shadow passed over his face, his eyes feral and deep, but it was just a trick of the mind. When he looked back at me, it was with concern and worry, with a reassuring smile. "... Not a good day, today, is it?"

No kidding. I coughed, instinctively looking away, but we were too close for me to even have breathing room. My face was buried against his dark green Henley shirt, and I could feel his every heaving breath. I didn't dare move; the shelf was in a precarious spot already, and I didn't want to be responsible for killing both of us. "W-What do we do?" I practically whispered.

"I'll try to squirm out of here…" Flippy breathed back, and I could feel his muscles churn like gears on a machine slowly turning, trying to gain force. Without meaning to, my hands clutched tightly on him, my entire body stiffening. One false move, and it would be over for us.

But he stopped, and he sighed deeply. "I can't move. My foot's stuck. Maybe you could try?" At these words, a sharp spike of anxiety struck my body, making my trembling worse. I probably had a better chance, considering my body was free and smaller to boot. But what if I made the situation worse? What if squirming out was the wrong move?

I didn't have to think for long. I heard piercing shrieks and the pungent smell of burning flesh followed. A puddle seeped into our small, claustrophobic niche and the moment it wet Flippy's shoulder, we were gone.

The violent sensation of vibration, fire, and shock overcame me, tearing my body and setting my blood aflame. My bones rattled, my hair burned, and my skin melted. If I screamed, I wouldn't have known because my ears shriveled and exploded like firecrackers.

Electrocution. Of all ways to go, I really didn't expect this. I would learn later that Lumpy neglected to mop properly, leaving puddles everywhere around the mart, and the shelves piled over and crushed a faulty generator (the one Handy was supposed to fix), setting the electricity off. Reaction after reaction… Despite all of my precautions, I still died. I still had to suffer.

And Flippy had to see my most vulnerable side.

Oh well. This was still nothing compared to my third meeting with Flippy, when I finally met _him_.


End file.
